From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: EOL: unix/dos/mac Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:11:45 +0900 Message-ID: <87hajydi5a.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <20130325215636.f75d8f7b7030b1564d79da9d@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1364263919 4182 80.91.229.3 (26 Mar 2013 02:11:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2013 02:11:59 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Xue Fuqiao , per.starback@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Mar 26 03:12:26 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UKJN8-0005tV-OR for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 26 Mar 2013 03:12:22 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41336 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UKJMk-0006v4-IE for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:11:58 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:32901) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UKJMh-0006uu-Ke for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:11:56 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UKJMg-00012M-BU for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:11:55 -0400 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:43051) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UKJMg-00010X-19; Mon, 25 Mar 2013 22:11:54 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5FEF497090A; Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:11:45 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 1B65C1A3D97; Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:11:45 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta32) "habanero" b0d40183ac79 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:158182 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > > The end-of-line indicators for coding systems are unix, dos, and > > mac. I suggest they are replaced with lf, crlf, and cr. > > Someone needs to check how this would affect non-wizard users. I don't see why it would. Non-wizards rarely want to see it at all, and usually have a very incomplete understanding of what it means. IME that's what it means to be a non-wizard. Even in Japan, where users encounter 4 or 5 (!!) encodings *every* *day* (ISO-2022-JP in mail headers, EUC-JP and Shift JIS in text files from older *nix and Micros*ft environments, UTF-8 in text files from modern environments, and UTF-16 in file names on NT file systems), younger users don't even realize that they're there. They just call coding problems "mojibake" and ask for corrected data. I think a better way to present this information would be to put it in a separate "troubleshoot this buffer" function. Perhaps adding it to C-u C-x =, or a separate function on C-h = (both with the nuance "troubleshoot around point"). Caveat: I have no empirical evidence for the feeling that this would be better, just introspection and experience with helping users who are not much helped by the current UI. The idea is that ordinarily, Emacs just Does The Right Thing, so there's no need to know what the EOL suffix (or for that matter the EOL modeline indicator) means, and many users forget or never learn. If they *do* run into trouble like "stair-stepping" or "^M" in a buffer, they can use C-u C-x = to find out "what's different about this linebreak".